ALL SYSTEME D AT THE HOLIDAY INN

Janine di Giovanni explains how the

French are running the show in Sarajevo's only functioning hotel

Sarajevo THE TELEPHONE rang shortly after midnight. I was in deep sleep, but the sound of a telephone ringing — completely unfamiliar in Sarajevo — jolted me awake. It was a French radio journalist who lived on the fifth floor, the unofficial burgomas- ter of the Holiday Inn.

'Wake up!' he shouted. 'The water is running and she is hot!'

The phone went dead. It took me a moment to understand what he meant, and then I stumbled out of my sleeping bag, wincing at the cold (minus 14 degrees that morning, not much warmer in an unheated hotel) and turned on the useless taps in my bathroom. Unfortunately, on the second floor of the hotel the water was not run- ning and she was not hot. I had used the last of my bottled water from Zagreb to clean my teeth the night before. I climbed back into my sleeping bag clothed, filthy and miserable, and fell asleep to the rattle of nearby Kalashnikovs. Such is life at the Holiday Inn, Sarajevo.

The Holiday Inn is an ugly, cavernous structure that must have been depressing la the best of times. It is hideously decorated in that depressing post-modern communist way — purple lounge chairs and globe lamps. It is located in one of the most dan- gerous and exposed areas in Sarajevo right off Snipers' Alley and a few hundred metres from the Serb-held front line. When I visited the friendly Serb gunners on the hills above Sarajevo, they very kindly point- ed out the Holiday Inn and laughed at what easy target practice it can be. I could see my own room from their position. One entire side of the Holiday Inn has been gut- ted by artillery and snipers; when guests check in now, they are told not to walk on that side of the building. Unfortunately, MY bedroom was on a strategic corner next to a row of blown-out rooms I would jog by them in the morning on my way to break- fast.

The fact that the Holiday Inn manages to function at all in the midst of a harrowing nine-month siege is a testament to the astonishing black-market contacts of the management. Despite the fact that there IS no water, intermittent electricity, appalling food and rooms scarred by shrapnel and bullets, it could well be the most profitable Holiday Inn in the world. Since the Dele" gates' Club, the old villa where journolists used to stay has been taken over by the top UN soldier General Morillon and his imported Swiss chef, reporters have 110 other choice but to stay in the Holiday 11111; and news organisations like Reuters, AF' and the BBC pay thousands of dollars 8 month for a place to put their satellite dish- es, generators and much coveted jerricans full of petrol. There are certain initiation procedures one must undergo at the Holiday lari; When I first arrived in mid-December, was baffled by the dry, redundant lavato' ries and the obvious question arose of ho91 one used the facilities. No one tells ye? how to do anything, but everyone has the° own procedures. The French journalists al the experts, having narrowed down the bes,. way to survive in style in the worst possible conditions. They call it 'Systeme a although no one seemed to know what tl'w

stood for. It meant that while the rest of US began to scratch and look decidedly seedy, the French seemed to grow more chic and elegant. They risked the harrow- ing airport rat-run to pick up packages containing necessary items such as crates of wine, tins of pâté and slabs of good sala- mi from Paris. They smoked cigars and Played poker by candlelight. They bribed the right people to get laundry done; elec- tricity turned on; random heating. 'Let me tell you a secret,' one told me. 'You can get everything you want if you do it with a smile.' Paul Marchand, the radio journalist (and leader of the French pack who never w9re a flak jacket because it clashed with !its clothes and called those of us who did tourists), had rigged up an elaborate Immersion heating system with a metal coat-hanger and an electrical cord. If the water happened to run at the same time as his electricity was running, he had luke- warm water.

The management of the Holiday Inn Clearly follows the same rule of thumb as the French journalists, only using Systeme

to the highest level. When I arrived, the manager was a shady character called Clink°. Some time around Christmas, one of the waiters told me that Dinko had 'dis- appeared (read: arrested). For what? I asked innocently. Black-marketeering? Extortion? 'Don't question the food that You eat,' was the short reply. It was true —

while the rest of the city survived on humanitarian-aid rice and macaroni, sup- plemented by the occasional loaf of white bread, we at the Holiday Inn had real (revolting, but nonetheless real) food.

Three times a day, we gathered in one room designated for Novinare Strane (for- eign journalists) like old people convalesc- ing in a day room, eating at long refectory tables and whining about the cold. The purpose of the room was to separate us from the gangsters and criminals eating in the main dining-room: surly armed men flashing thick wads of 100-dollar bills and showing off the heavily made-up Bosnian floozies on their arms. Occasionally, one or two would wander into the Novinare Strane dining area to glare at us: on these occasions, Burgomaster Marchand (who called himself 'the King of Sarajevo') would leap to his feet and tell the waiters to ask them to leave. The gangsters occa- sionally threatened journalists or demand- ed favours, as in 'You give me your petrol.' On these occasions, journalists always obliged. Never refuse any kind of a favour, ever, I was told firmly by one of the most experienced of the Sarajevo reporters. You might need them some day, and the food you eat every day was probably supplied by them.

We ate well, considering the siege. It was the same thing twice a day, for lunch and dinner: watery soup followed by some

kind of indeterminable meat drowned in gravy, tinned green beans and pudding tast- ing faintly of petrol. Vegetarians suffered; the Reuters correspondent seemed to live on bread, rice and Happy Tomato ketchup. 'My grandfather in Buchenwald ate better than this,' Paul Marchand said one night when we were given a plate of bones with bits of pork attached to them. But he ate them, because while all of us made jokes about the food (`Siege fish again! Nine months of landlocked siege and they're serving fish?') we all knew that we were eating. The people a few hundred yards away from us, living in the gutted skeletons of buildings, were waiting for their next aid package and trying to make a packet of rice last a week.

The biggest problem was the heat or rather, the lack of it. While some rooms on the fourth and fifth floors had priority (or managed to bribe the right person with Sys- teme D) and got the occasional blast of heat or electricity, others like mine on the second floor got none. Most of the win- dows had been blown away by bullets and replaced with plastic so that the cold and damp blew down from the mountains and permeated everything. I wore the same clothes every day — two pairs of thermals, a pair of jeans, two T-shirts, a polo neck, a jumper, another jumper, a Gortex anorak, three pairs of socks, hiking boots, gloves, a hat and a scarf. I took off the gloves only to eat and type; I took off the anorak only to sleep and then it was stretched over my sleeping bag.

The hotel's generator was another mys- tery, like the food that was delivered every day. Where the petrol came from was a source of speculation; originally it was believed that it came from the Ukrainian battalion of the UN peace-keeping force, later on it was said to come from the French battalion. All I know is that at one point Burgomaster Marchand, who had lived in the hotel since June, became so outraged by the lack of facilities that he decided to take matters into his own hands.

A meeting was organised between the management and some of the journalists; it was then decided that electricity would go on a few hours a day in certain priority rooms — mainly the agencies who had to file stories on an hourly basis. The other reporters would get some electricity between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m., which was the time when most of them turned on the space heaters that they managed to buy from the black market (the front desk of the hotel). One reporter bought a massive spaceheater for 400 deutschmarks which he displayed proudly. 'My tropical par- adise,' he breathed.

However, the luxury of the space heaters lasted about five days. The burgomaster decided that the heaters were drawing too much fuel from the generator. One evening, after a particularly nasty day, I returned to my room to find that my heater (recently sent from London by my managing editor) — along with the tropi- cal paradise heater and everyone else's — had been confiscated. It was the only time in the month I was there that I came close to tears.

All this deprivation greatly influenced the rules of seduction drastically changed in the Holiday Inn. One was not invited into another person's room for a brandy or to listen to music; one was inevitably lured by the prospect of, 'Listen. . I've got some water in my room. . .' or 'I have the biggest space heater in the building.' Within these constraints I had two memo- rable offers. One was from a Bosnian whose mother had hoarded enough water to give me a bath. Unfortunately, I was led to believe that the offer included the con- dition that I marry the son. The second was an offer from a French journalist to wash and dry my hair by hand — a process that takes over two hours.

It was true that the main topic of con- versation, beside the horror of the war, was water: who had found some that day, who had washed and how.

'Tonight is the big night,' said the UPI correspondent one evening at dinner, and everyone turned to gape at him. 'Beard- washing night,' he said. If you did manage to wash your hair (and I did — by using Systeme D) everyone knew about it and eyed you suspiciously. 'Where did you get the water?' Rumours circulated wildly: that there was a hot shower in the bread factory on Snipers' Alley; that there was a shower somewhere in the bowels of the Holiday Inn. You could always risk the drive to Kisiljak, the last frontier town out- side of Sarajevo, to rent a heated hotel room for the afternoon and have a real bath, but that had connotations of weak- ness.

By the time I had left, I had gleaned enough street smartness to know my way around the Systeme D of the Holiday Inn. My great triumph was getting some socks washed at the laundry; and on the day before I left I stumbled into a veritable gold mine. After dispensing several cartons of Marl- boros, I found a man who found a man who found a man who gave me a key and led me to a locked door. I opened it tenta- tively like the explorer who first discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen. Inside was a filthy shower, but the water was running and she was hot. I peeled off my three lay- ers of clothing in record time and stood under the lukewarm stream feeling alter- nately guilty and ecstatic.

Unfortunately, I spent too much time ruminating: by the time I soaped up, the water she stopped running, and I was left to dry off with my T-shirt, still soapy. It seemed the most fitting way to leave the Holiday Inn.

Janine di Giovanni is a writer on the Sunday Times.